


Dilaudid

by Schgain



Series: Białowieża [6]
Category: Darkwood (Video Game)
Genre: Doctor's POV, Medical Horror, POV Second Person, Surreal, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 01:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16254089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schgain/pseuds/Schgain
Summary: The Doctor knows what he's done.





	Dilaudid

**Author's Note:**

> Song comes from The Mountain Goats. Dilaudid is a kind of painkiller derived from morphine.

The creature stuffed into the corner of the room is little more than a drug-addled pile of laundry.

He is tied to the remains of the chair.

He is stupored in a military tunnel.

It doesn't actually matter where he is.

Not a single thing actually matters.

He lays at your feet. His arms are tied behind his back and also they're up guarding his face, halfsleeping eye peering up from under the brim of a shabby hat. Either way he whimpers: not like a dog but like a dying thing, thin and desperate and rattling.

The syringe is full of truth serum. The syringe is full of ketamine. It doesn't actually matter now that he's down and out. Like a kicked dog.

None of this actually matters.

It'd be laughable for you to try and act otherwise.

He tries to speak, garbled pleas forced out of a ruined larynx. You think he might be threatening you. The thought is ludicrous; you laugh, high pitched and gigglish, and the old dog groans in pain. You want to kill him and you don't, but what you want doesn't matter. 

What anyone wants doesn't matter.

The first experiment was post mortem, a large corpse from the village. It had been partially charred by fire, and the skin had flaked off, black and ugly, to reveal the pink dermis below. You had left it overnight and came back to find your morgue box emptied, your corpse having up and walked away. 

The second experiment, you'd taken precautions. It had been a child that time, maybe fourteen or nineteen, and only close to death instead of on the other side. It had been ailed with something other than mushroom or tree. You had taken it, chained it down. It had cried, for its mother or its puppy or God, and of course none of them answered. You had shut it up with a wired jaw, had tested vaccine and palliative on it, until the flush of life returned to their cheeks. 

Its mother cried that you'd brutalized her child, had made them something dead and profane, had made bee maggots writhe in its palms, had made its eyes glow with firefly light. In her hysteria she had pounded on your door screaming until she didn't scream anymore. 

Later you heard she'd tossed her child in the pond, chains and all.

"Who sent you?" Your words are high and whiny in your throat and your hands shake, shake, shake. You can't muster skunding intimidating. The things you've seen, the things you've done... You want a cigarette.

He whimpers again, turning his head away from the meager light and burying it in the crooks of his arms. The ropes around his wrist are bloodied and frayed, and you don't remember where you are. You wonder if he had been like this as a child, forced into a corner by a raging man. You guess you won't ever find out.

"No one is coming to save you, this time."

No one is coming to save _you_ either, but he already knows that.

"Why don't you just give upq and die?"

Something rattles in the stranger's mouth, rattles like a dead thing, like a gourd filled with seeds, like a viper tail, like nails not holding a train track in place. He smells like smoke and meat and mushrooms and yet another thing you failed to kill.

You don't know where he finds the strength to pull himself to his feet, but he staggers up and you stagger back. 

"Don't- don't come any closer!" You brandish a syringe at him, your unsteady hand belaying you. You are not a man of secrets. 

He picks his head up. His eyes are dazed and wild, bloodied at the corners, his pupils shining in the dim. 

Your death stands in this hole. When he moves, he moves with an axe.


End file.
